Landlord and tenant

Key Contacts

Our award-winning property lawyers work with landlords and tenants across the board, when granting or taking leases, during their term and following their expiry. This work is the bedrock of our practice. Our experience is considerable and our service comprehensive.

We have a long history of working with clients with large property portfolios and complex group structures. Our experience gives our lawyers the edge to negotiate the best possible terms for our clients, often where time pressures are significant. Our work includes:

We work exclusively on the real estate portfolio of MEPC in managing their property assets, in particular their mixed use technology and business park at Milton Park and their UK technology park at Silverstone.

Our property and construction lawyers acted on the £5m acquisition of Smeg UK’s new global flagship store on Regent Street.

We work for Arcadia Group on their large retail property portfolio dealing with lease acquisitions, disposals, lease renewal and all portfolio management issues, including real estate litigation. We recently worked on the development and roll out of a ground-breaking deal with Tesco to trial ‘stores-within-stores’ at Tesco sites throughout the country.

We work exclusively on the portfolio of The Body Shop International plc in England and Wales, dealing with lease acquisitions, disposals, lease renewals and all portfolio management issues. Highlights of the last 12 months include the completion of a sub-letting of HQ warehouse space to Amazon for use as a distribution centre and a new acquisition at Brent Cross Shopping Centre.

We work for property investment service provider, Patrizia, on their 95 acre business park at Chineham. Recent work includes ‘Project Jigsaw’ – an interconnected network of agreements and leasehold transactions to relocate five major occupiers of the park.

We act for Moss Bros Group plc and acted on their recent acquisition of a new store at Westfield Stratford.

We advise building supplies merchant Grafton Group on their leasehold portfolio. We advised on a major acquisition programme which, in addition to the acquisition of new leases, involves planning and construction advice.

The real estate team has recently concluded several years work for National Grid relating to the management and negotiation of the land and rights acquisitions required for a multi-billion pound project to upgrade London’s ageing infrastructure. The team has facilitated the construction of new 400kV underground cable tunnels on behalf of National Grid.

We advise a number of funds managed by Rockspring Investment Managers.

We are proud to work with retailers Ladbrokes, McDonald’s, Mothercare, Oxfam, Pia and Whittards on their significant portfolio and asset management work.

We are delighted to report the completion of our last big deal of 2018! Senior Associate, Richard Mulcock of BrookStreet des Roches, advised longstanding retail client, Mothercare, on the £14.85m sale of their 100,000 sq ft office HQ and adjacent warehouse located in Watford. The sale-and-leaseback deal saw Mothercare...

Forfeiture or the “right of re-entry” is a landlord’s right to end a lease in the event of a breach by the tenant. This note provides an overview of how and when the right arises in commercial leases, the procedure to be followed, relief available to the tenant and...

The Supreme Court recently handed down its decision in S Franses Limited -v- The Cavendish Hotel (London) Limited (2018). In this much anticipated Judgment, the Supreme Court determined that a landlord cannot oppose a renewal of a tenant’s lease pursuant to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 (“the 1954...

The law with regards to the insurance of leasehold property, and reinstatement after damage or destruction, can be uncertain and potentially unfair. There is no implied obligation on either party to insure the property and there is no principle of law requiring that any insurance monies received are actually...

If a company goes into liquidation, the liquidator is able to disclaim the whole of an insolvent tenant’s liability under a lease. The disclaimer ends all of the tenant’s rights, interests and liabilities, effectively meaning that the tenant can get out of the lease early. This can have a...

Commercial contracts impose obligations on the parties to them as well as rights. Where the parties have complete control over performance of obligations (for example, obligations to make payments or not to carry out specified acts), it is appropriate that the obligations are absolute (eg “the buyer will pay...

With the recent publication of the 2019 edition of Chambers UK, we are proud to announce that our Real Estate Team is once again ranked in Band 1 for Thames Valley. The team is described as “very good – both timely and accurate”, a “very good outfit with lawyers...

BrookStreet des Roches Seminar
After its success at the Oxford RICS Regional Conference, Jamie Barton and Simeon Fenn will be repeating their seminar guiding you through the pertinent issues for short term commercial leases. Aimed at property professionals, including surveyors, investors, landlords and occupiers, this seminar will cover the following...

Note: the Finance Bill 2019 contains provisions to reduce the SDLT filing and payment window from 30 days to 14 days for land transactions with an effective date on or after 1 March 2019.
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is a tax on land transactions. It is (potentially) payable whenever...

Note: the Finance Bill 2019 contains provisions to reduce the SDLT filing and payment window from 30 days to 14 days for land transactions with an effective date on or after 1 March 2019.
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is a tax on land transactions. It is potentially payable whenever...

For landlords of commercial premises, one of their main concerns is making sure that the tenant pays all sums due under the lease. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, so what are the options for recovering unpaid rent? Simeon Fenn from our real estate litigation team’s note summarises the different...

Owners of commercial property often want to allow someone into occupation without the time and expense of negotiating a lease. There is a tendency in these situations to just allow the occupation on an informal basis, not involving lawyers or thinking too much about the nature of the occupation....

We’re immensely proud of our client relationships. We strive to be a welcome and constant companion throughout their journeys.

Many of our clients have been with us for a long time: some since the firm began. We help them navigate matters to achieve the right outcome and we stay with them until everything has been resolved. By securing and protecting our clients’ interests, we give them the confidence and freedom to focus on their core business.

Our clients operate in different industries and sectors, but most of them have serious real estate interests, whether in the form of property in the traditional sense or other types of physical infrastructure.